


Doesn't Hurt to Try (That's a Lie)

by Ghostery



Series: Jim + Tilly Friendship [3]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Break Up, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Humor, James T. Kirk Being an Idiot, Kissing, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-02 07:36:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18806644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghostery/pseuds/Ghostery
Summary: Tilly turned on her heel and walked away. She didn’t look back. Which was actually a mistake, possibly for the first time in history.- - -Jim should really make sure to check all the facts before he jumps to conclusions.





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> The second chapter of this is just an alternate ending, not actually another chapter. I actually wrote that ending first, then wrote the one in this chapter. The second one fits more with the trope. Then I got locked into indecision about which one I liked better, so pick your favorite, I guess.

Tilly hung back from the crowd feeling quite awkward as Ruth and Jim made out in front of god and everyone just beyond the docking bay doors. She was a little surprised that Ruth would even bother being here in the first place. Honestly, she had thought they were on the outs. Hadn’t Ruth said that she was ending it as soon as Jim got back and then, ‘Oh hi Tilly, didn’t see you there’ when she realized Tilly was sitting at the same table as her?

She guessed that was only the plan before Jim had gotten a shiny new medal. Which Tilly definitely wasn’t jealous of in the least. It wasn’t like she had actually wanted to go to a war zone and help negotiate a peace that had only days earlier seemed impossible. It wasn’t like that could have materially boosted her career in any way. No, taking the time to do research and stay an extra year at the Academy was the right call. Just sitting in labs all day and never doing anything braver than standing back and allowing the automatic fire suppression system to take care of any minor accidental fires that arose. Sure, her mentors were all very excited about her work and, yes, Paul Stamets himself had reviewed one of her papers favorably a month ago. That was all really great and unlikely to get her mom talking about how _Sylvia_ should consider joining the diplomatic corps again, which was a bonus.

Still, she couldn’t help but feel that the most exciting thing she’d done lately was climbing through some service ducts. Granted, that was as part of a search party for an alien vole that had gotten loose from one of the zoology labs. Which, while it had been ugly and noxious and sort of threatening... well, it really didn’t compare to an actual active war. It didn’t really matter that the vole had sent three people to the infirmary before she’d managed to stun it. The two things weren’t even on the same scale.

“Jealous Tilly?” It was a classmate who said it, some sort of friend of Jim’s, maybe? Something Timothy? Why couldn’t she ever remember his first name? “If you wanted to we could try it ourselves some time.” Ah, yep, that was why. “We could even go for it now if you’d like.”

“Why would I ever want to do that with you? It’s not like you could possibly live up to my expectations,” Tilly scoffed and moved away from him. She’d see Jim later, it wasn’t worth this.

“Because I’m not him? Yeah, I know. I’m not Kirk. Story of my life.” Timothy said, a hair too loud and frustrated. Tilly turned back to him and took one step closer to him.

“Yeah, you’re not him. For the record, I’m not jealous of _her_. I’m jealous of Kirk... and so are you,” she hissed. It was basically true and going to be taken in entirely the wrong way, which was fine by her.

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.” Tilly turned on her heel and walked away. She didn’t look back. Which was actually a mistake, possibly for the first time in history.

If she had looked back, she might have realized that Jim was somewhat successfully extricating himself from Ruth’s enthusiastic embrace. She might have extrapolated that Jim had managed to overhear part of the conversation and come to wrong conclusions himself due to faulty and incomplete information. She might have had some warning or even been able to cut him off at the pass.

As it was, she got on with her day none the wiser.

* * *

Jim pondered alone in his dorm, staring at the ceiling over his bed. By rights, he should have been with Ruth, in either his dorm or hers or somewhere else. He’d turned her down though. She hadn’t been happy, but Jim honestly couldn’t remember the last time she had been happy with him anyway. He was pretty sure the relationship had been only treading water for a while. It wasn’t that he didn’t care for her, he did, but she wanted a different kind of person, one who didn’t want to leave on a ship all the time. She kept talking about planetary assignments and Starbases. He wanted a ship.

It just wasn’t going to work out and they both knew it. They were going to have to end it before they became bitter with each other.

With that settled, Jim’s mind turned to his other, more difficult problem. Tilly, oh Tilly. What the hell was he going to do?

He loved her, of course, he did. He couldn’t help it. It just wasn’t romantic or sexual and he couldn’t really help that either. He’d just also never anticipated that she’d want anything other than friendship from him. He was pretty sure that if Tilly had a type, he wasn’t it.

Well, he had been sure of that before today.

Could he do it though? Could he fall in love with Tilly? There was absolutely nothing wrong with her. She was one of his favorite people to be around. There was really no salient reason for why they’d been friends this whole time and nothing else, except for a mutual lack of interest. They had a lot in common in their hobbies, interests, and careers. They understood the drive to become a starship captain in Starfleet. They encouraged each other to do better. They got along really well and they even got on well with each other’s parents. They knew each other’s best qualities and a fair number of their worse ones. They had even been able to more or less successfully live together. Well at least for the three weeks they’d gone sailing and camping with his father during a break from school. Living together in Starfleet quarters would be a piece of cake after that experience. He was also pretty sure she’d give her life for him and vice versa, but that was par for the course with Starfleet.

In theory, they seemed like a perfect fit. It had just also never happened. The way he saw things now he had three options.

1\. Ignore it and hope it went away instead of blowing up.

2\. Try to let Tilly down easy and hope she didn’t decide to stop being friends with him or that they didn’t just stop talking to each other after he graduated. Since that was coming up soon and then he’d get his first posting they could pretty easily lose contact if they weren’t willing to put in some effort.

3\. Try to fall in love with Tilly. If successful, they’d run the risk of breaking up somewhere down the line, but in his experience being friends with an ex wasn’t that hard. Surely, it wouldn’t be with Tilly.

He sighed. He didn’t like any of these options. Sure, it was kind of flattering finding out someone wanted you, but he really just wanted his simple easy friendship back. He crossed his arms.

First thing’s first though, he would break up with Ruth tomorrow.

* * *

Tilly hadn’t seen Jim since the day before yesterday by the docking bay. Which wasn’t exactly unexpected, but she was surprised when she found Ruth sitting by herself on a bench in the little memorial garden on campus. She was slowly twirling a zinnia by its stem with her fingertips and staring off into the middle distance.

“Oh, hey. Ruth, have you seen Jim?” Tilly asked. Ruth burst into tears, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry. Do you want to talk about it or should I just go? I should probably just go, right?” She’d never been all that close to Ruth so if something bad had happened, Tilly couldn’t imagine why Ruth would talk to her about it.

“Jim broke up with me,” Ruth said between sobs.

“Oh, wow. That’s unexpected,” Tilly said sympathetically, sitting down next to her. It kind of was, she’d expected Ruth to get there first. Ruth managed to calm herself a little.

“He was so _nice_ about it. Talking about how we want different things from our lives and how sometimes being in love just isn’t enough. He’s right, of course. I think I knew that it wasn’t going to work before he did. He was just willing to let go before I was.”

“Yeah, he can be a jerk like that,” Tilly said. It had the intended effect. Ruth started giggling, even through the occasional tear or hiccup.

“To be honest, when he started talking I afraid he was going to tell me he’d found someone else.”

“Really?” Tilly asked. Ruth nodded, her misery creeping back a bit. Tilly couldn’t think of anyone Jim had shown interest in since he’d set his sights on Ruth with Tilly’s encouragement.

“Yeah, I thought he’d finally decided to go after you.” Ruth sounded a little accusatory to Tilly’s ear. Tilly couldn’t help it. She laughed until she had tears in her eyes, too.

“Oh no. Definitely not. Jim and I aren’t like that.” She couldn’t even picture it, her mind just refused. “Besides, I kind of have a thing going on with someone else.”

“Really? I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, I’m not surprised. I don’t think Jim knows. We’re not a serious couple or anything. It’s just... fun.”

* * *

Finally breaking up with Ruth, a day later than he’d planned, had been a relief even more than it had been heartbreak. He hadn’t expected that. Now, he could graduate and accept a posting on any ship he liked. Go anywhere he liked. Accept any mission that caught his fancy. Maybe he’d try to go on an extended expedition.

Sure, he wouldn’t have anyone waiting to kiss him when he got back, but he also wouldn’t disappoint anyone by leaving.

Maybe he’d only ever come back to Earth on sufferance. Well maybe not, his parents were still here, but at least it was an option now. Just like leaving campus to wander around San Francisco had been an option.

He didn’t have any real idea of where he wanted to go or what he wanted to do, but it was just kind of nice to wander around on one of the warmer sunny days.

He eventually found himself in Golden Gate Park, which was only a short walk from a public transporter and not terribly far from campus in any case, and sat down on a bench. Maybe he’d just do some people watching, there were more than enough to watch here on such a nice day. He could even just watch the squirrels and birds or stop and smell the flowers. The day was his and he could do anything he wanted, including not think about how he was avoiding Tilly.

No, he wasn’t avoiding Tilly. That’d be ridiculous. He just needed time to think and plan what he was going to do.

He just needed a solid plan.

* * *

The sky was darkening when Jim went back to campus with a plan. Sure, maybe it was a terrible plan, but he wouldn’t actually know that until he tried it and now was the time to set it in motion.

He knocked on Tilly’s door. A couple of muted noises later and the door opened just enough for Tilly’s head and only her head to be seen. Weird.

“Jim. Hi. What’s up?” Her face was flushed and she blew a wayward curl out of her eyes, but it just returned to its original spot. Jim only found it kind of cute, in the way he had always found Tilly kind of cute.

“Do you want to grab dinner? There’s a new place that’s serving traditional food from Betazed. It’s supposed to be really good.”

“That sounds great, but maybe tomorrow? I’m a bit busy right now. Got a lot of stuff to do. I’m on a pretty tight deadline. Yeah. Tomorrow would be much better for me.”

“Yeah, sure. My social schedule is wide open.”

“Okay. Great. 1900 okay?”

“Yeah, I’ll have to meet you at the transporters, though.”

“All right. I’ll see you then. Bye.”

“Bye,” Jim said to Tilly’s door. That was unexpected. That was the first time they had talked since he’d gotten back from Axanar and she rain-checked him for dinner? What was that about? She couldn’t possibly have gotten that much busier while he was away, could she?

* * *

“Looks like you’ve been stood up,” Daniels said. Jim had been pacing around the transporter room for the last twenty minutes waiting for Tilly to show up, “Has Ruth finally wised up and dropped you?”

“No, I broke up with her yesterday.”

“And you’ve already got someone else on your arm? Damn, even if you’ve been stood up, I want your life. Who’s the lucky one?”

“Me, Daniels, it’s always me whenever I get a date, but I’m not going on a date. Tilly was supposed to meet me here. I haven’t really talked to her since I got back and we’re supposed to grab dinner.”

“Oh,” Daniels said, “you could have fooled me. You’re way too nervous for a friend date.”

“Tilly’s almost never late,” Jim said, by way of explanation. It wasn’t the only reason he was nervous, but Daniels didn’t need to know that.

“Ah, do you want me to try to comm her? I mean, it’s not like this transporter room is hopping or anything. I’ve got time,” Daniels offered. Jim was just about to accept when Tilly came in.

“Oh my god Jim, I’m so sorry I’m late, but the damn zoology lab cannot control their voles.”

“Voles?”

“Yeah, alien voles and when they get out they chew on the conduits and, long story short, I’m going to have to totally scrap and restart my experiment tomorrow. Three weeks of work just went up in smoke and so did one of the voles. It was awful.”

“Ew, that poor dumb critter. I’m sorry about your work. Does this mean you don’t want to go to dinner? I’d understand if you’d rather go back to the lab.”

“No, I think if I look at my work again today I’ll cry. I really want a drink.”

“We can arrange that,” he said as they stepped onto the transporter pad.

* * *

When they got to the restaurant it was reassuringly busy, but not crowded, so they were still able to get a table quickly. The wait staff was prompt and friendly. The food was good, which was a little surprising because the menu wasn’t just a sampling of Betazoid cuisine, but also a fusion of Betazoid and Vulcan cuisines, with a selection of traditional Vulcan fare. They both wondered how the chef had come up with the idea of the combination. There was also a full bar, which Tilly took advantage of, with the hope that the alcohol would get rid of the smell of smoke, ozone, and fried vole out of her nose.

All of this was great and thankfully offered some distraction, because for the first time, eating dinner alone with Tilly felt weird, especially after he mentioned breaking up with Ruth. Maybe it was just him? Maybe he was being weird or possibly making this weird? He hoped it was just him.

Tilly didn’t seem to notice, at least. She was the same as ever, which was a blessing and a curse. A blessing because she always was and a curse because was this how she’d been hiding her feelings? How long had this been going on? He couldn’t detect any change in her behavior, except that she might be a bit more distant than he was used to. The topics they were covering were interesting but superficial. Mostly they talked about coursework and she had a lot of questions about the Axanar mission. He took her good-natured ribbing about the Palm Leaf he’d been awarded in stride until it got weird again.

“They just had to make a whole new medal for you, didn’t they?”

“Not just me, Tilly. You know that.”

“Where are you even going to wear it, Jim? If you keep this up, by the time you make captain, there won’t be room. It’ll be somewhere over here.” She reached over and poked him gently right in the center of his chest, he nearly flinched. “Or possibly over here,” she slid her finger lightly across his chest, not noticing that he was holding his breath, and poked again closer to his underarm. This time he couldn’t help it, he did flinch. Before, it wouldn’t have bothered him, but now he couldn’t help but see the subtext.

“Sorry. Did I hurt you? I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“You didn’t, don’t worry about it.” He changed the topic and for the rest of their dinner, they talked about her research.

“So, Straal and Stamets really liked your paper? That’s fantastic,” he enthused. She shrugged.

“Straal’s been commenting on my work for a while. There was an officer on my dad’s ship who knew him and got us in touch, but Stamets was more dismissive. I think that’s just kind of his default. I met him once at a conference and he totally blew me off. His husband was nice, very apologetic. There wasn’t anything he could do, though.”

“What an ass, Stamets I mean, not…”

“Dr. Culber.”

“Right.”

“He’s pretty much the leader in the field though and it’s a small field. We’ll just have to get used to each other at some point, no matter how much of an ass he is.”

“You shouldn’t have to deal with that Tills.”

“I know, but unless I change my research focus, there’s not much I can do about it.”

Not being able to do much about a situation is turning into a theme with us, Jim thought. To his dismay, he still only felt friendship for Tilly.

* * *

A foggy marine layer had taken back over when they left the restaurant, causing all of the lights around them to be in a haze and muting the sounds of the city. Reflexively, Jim held out his arm to Tilly and she took it, linking them together arm in arm. She hugged herself with her other arm and linked her fingers together on his bicep, pulling closer to him. Really, it all should have been terribly romantic. It possibly would have been if he could only get with it.

“Cold?” He asked.

“Yeah, you’d think after so many years in San Francisco, I’d remember to bring a jacket with me.”

“It happens, here.” He pulled away from her and took off his jacket, handing it to her, “I’m wearing more layers than you anyway.”

“Thanks,” she put it on, pushing up the too long sleeves to free her hands. Then they slipped right back into their previous positions to walk back to the transporter.The restaurant wasn’t incredibly far from campus, but it was farther than they were willing to walk that day. Jim tried not to think about what they looked like as people walked past them. To those people, he was sure they looked like a couple who were walking home from a romantic night out, which was only true in the most basic sense in that they were two people walking home after having dinner. Try as he might, this just wasn’t working. He wondered what Tilly was thinking about. Was she hoping for him to do something? Was she secretly thrilled that they were walking so closely? Had he watched one too many old romantic films from the media database? Was it the influence of that luridly purple book that Ruth had recommended and because it was important to her he’d read? He didn’t know.

Previously he would have guessed that she was thinking about all the work she’d have to do tomorrow in the lab after the voles, how cold her nose was, and maybe even wondering about the last time he’d cleaned his jacket. Which had been Tuesday, he reassured himself. But he couldn’t be sure about Tilly anymore.

He wasn’t sure of anything by the time they’d made it to their dorm building. He had followed her to her dorm because it was on the way to his. He always did this, there wasn’t any reason for it to feel any different. In a lot of ways, it didn’t feel any different. They stopped outside her door. She took off his jacket and handed it back to him.

“Thanks for spending time with me,” Tilly said pulling him into a hug which was totally normal, “I missed you while you were out making war and peace.”

“I missed you too, Tilly.” Oh god, what did he do now again? Should he kiss her? Did she want that? He pressed his mouth gently to the hair by her temple, because well he’d done that before. They were friends who did things like that. There were other people in the galaxy who were friends who did things like that, right? Oh god. Had he led her on? They pulled away from each other.

“Night,” she said, going into her dorm.

“Good night,” he said, trying to act like everything was normal because it was. She did look at him a little oddly as she shut the door, though. He walked straight to his own dorm and collapsed on his bed. He scrubbed his hands through his hair, down his face, and then started to pull off his boots. What the hell was he going to do?

* * *

At first, Tilly thought she was imagining things. They were both busy people after all and she’d had a fairly major setback in her work through no fault of her own and it was just natural that she was seeing less of people who didn’t work in the same lab she did. She barely had time for any socializing right after her restart, but that didn’t last forever. She caught up with her work, got back on schedule, and found herself with free time again. So it became hard to ignore.

Finding time for things and people was often a matter of priority, right? Some things were important and some things were personal and it was a virtue to prioritize one’s time with that in mind. As future officers, they were expected to know the difference and act accordingly, which meant you didn’t always have a lot of time for friends. Sometimes you didn’t have time for anything but keeping yourself and your shipmates alive. That was what they’d been taught anyway. In her experience, the categories sometimes overlapped. However, even when one of them went off planet or something they’d always find time to at least send a short note over subspace at some point. They were living in the same building right now and she hadn’t seen Jim for two and a half weeks, which hadn’t ever happened before when they were both on campus. She wondered what was going on with him. He’d seemed a little off kilter after dinner at that restaurant, too. So, they were going to have lunch, it was the only way.

When he didn’t respond to her lunch invitation for two days though, she knew. He was avoiding her. She just didn’t know why, but she would find out.

It wasn’t like he could hide. She knew his schedule.

So, she waited for him and when he exited his seminar at 11:30, she pounced.

“Hey Jim,” she said, stopping right in front of him. “You busy?”

“Uh, no…”

“Good, come with me. We’re having lunch.” She held out her hand and he took it and she walked them all the way to the transporters, then to a deli, and Golden Gate Park. She didn’t want any of their friends on campus trying to join them.

“Now,” she started as she handed him his lunch, “eat your sandwich and tell me what the hell has been going on with you and why you’re avoiding me.” His shoulders fell and he took a bite of his sandwich, chewing for way longer than was necessary, Tilly noticed. He swallowed.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this to go on this long. I just… I just couldn’t figure out how to deal with this,” he said, gesturing between them with his free hand.

“What’s this?” She asked repeating his gesture.

“It’s just… look I overheard some of your conversation with Timothy the day I got back from Axanar and I don’t know how to handle it.”

“Handle what? I thought I dealt with him? He’s avoiding me even more than you have been.”

“No, I mean, the part where you rejected him because he wasn’t… well, me,” She barely caught the last two words. 

“Wait, wait, what do you think happened exactly? What did you hear?”

“Well, Ruth and I were…”

“Publicly displaying your affection for one another, I remember.”

“Yeah, and then Timothy came up to you and propositioned you and then he said something like ‘because I’m not him, I know, I’m not Kirk,’ and then you said something about how he was right about you being jealous and something about him being jealous.”

“And what did you get out of that?”

“That you wanted something besides friendship from me and you’re one of my best friends, Tilly. I can’t lose you,” he hung his head. “So you’ve fallen in love with me and what am I supposed to do? Let you down easy? Try to fall in love with you? I already love you, so that should be easy, right?” Jim said, “I just don’t want either of us to get hurt.” He looked and sounded miserable. Tilly felt bad for him, even though he’d mostly done this to himself.

“Jim, I need you to listen to me very closely. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“I am not in love with you.”

“Don’t just say that for my sake, Tilly.”

“Oh, believe me, I’m not. When have I ever done that? Look, you missed a really pivotal part of my conversation with Timothy. He did imply that I turned him down because he wasn’t you, not why I did it, but that’s not important right now. However, you missed the part where I explained that I wasn’t jealous of Ruth, but of you and so was he. I meant that you went away and did a really awesome mission and came back with a medal and I have not done that. I’ve been stuck in a lab valiantly battling an invading horde of voles— Did I mention they reproduced? Because they did—with nothing but a multi-specimen fungal growth canister and a type-1 phaser and not being rewarded for it _at all_ , but eh. Why explain that to him?”

“Really?”

“Yeah, especially the bit with the canister and the phaser,” she said. Jim dropped his head into his free hand.

“You’re absolutely sure that you aren’t in love with me?”

“Yes. Sheesh, your ego sometimes, not everyone you meet is going to fall in love with you.”

“I do actually know that.” He was indignant, but she could still see his doubts written across his face. This was going to require radical action.

“Okay, fine, if you don’t believe me, let’s just kiss and get it over with.”

“What? That’s counterintuitive and a terrible idea and I don’t see how that can actually prove anything. We’re already trying to prove a negative as it is.”

“What can I say? I have terrible ideas. It’s a talent,” she said and then slowly, giving him plenty of warning, she leaned over and... She felt his hands on her shoulders gently pushing her upright.

“I don’t need you to kiss me, Tilly,” he said.

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Okay, then.” Tilly shrugged. “I didn’t really want to kiss you anyway, for one thing, you’d have hot pastrami on rye breath and,” she looked in the bag sitting between them on the bench, “are those garlic fries I’m seeing? How did I miss that you ordered those?”

“I don’t know, you were standing right next to me.”

“Huh, but you’re sharing these, right?”

“Help yourself.”

“By the way, did I mention I’m seeing someone?” She asked, snagging a fry.

“What? No. Why didn’t you say that in the first place? We could have avoided a lot of this situation.”

“Well, it’s not serious or anything. Plus, you were avoiding me, remember? Makes it difficult to tell you anything when you do that.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Next time you get worked up about something like this, just come talk to me about it. That way we can just get through it and carry on being friends until we’re dead and whatever happens after that.”

“Now this plan, I like.”


	2. Alternate Ending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is just another way it could have gone.

“You’re absolutely sure that you aren’t in love with me?”

“Yes. Sheesh, your ego sometimes, not everyone you meet is going to fall in love with you.”

“I do actually know that.” He was indignant, but she could still see his doubts written across his face. This was going to require radical action.

“Okay, fine, if you don’t believe me, let’s just kiss and get it over with.”

“What? That’s counterintuitive and a terrible idea and I don’t see how that can actually prove anything. We’re already trying to prove a negative as it is.”

“What can I say? I have terrible ideas. It’s a talent,” she said and then slowly, giving him plenty of warning, she leaned over and kissed him. It wasn’t something she’d ever thought she’d do. It wasn’t bad. It was even pretty nice on a purely technical level. It just also paled in comparison to other kisses she’d experienced, even if she only considered today. They pulled away.

“Anything?” Jim asked.

“Nope. You?”

“No. Same as always.”

“Good, let’s never do that again, especially if you’ve been eating pastrami,” she grimaced. He looked askance at her.

“This was your idea.”

“True. It was and I knew you were eating that sandwich, too. I only have myself to blame.” She took a drink of her water. “By the way, did I tell you I’m seeing someone?”

“What? No. Why didn’t you say that in the first place? We could have avoided a lot of this situation.”

“Well, it’s not serious or anything and you never know. That kiss could have been a life-changing event. We could have been going to pick out china patterns and whatever else people put on wedding registries right now. Instead, we know we can just carry on being friends until we’re dead and whatever happens after that.”

“I’m okay with that, but I’m never going along with one of your ideas again.”

“You don’t actually mean that and I don’t believe you, but the sentiment is fair enough.”

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is appreciated.  
> [My tumblr](https://bitterific.tumblr.com)


End file.
